Vice President Kim Ratcliff was recently interviewed by ONN’s Mike Kallmeyer on the topic of social media. She set the “View from the Top,” highlighting Werth’s counsel to clients to guide their social media marketing investment.
See the clip here, by clicking on “Paul Werth” in the video viewer.
In three words, it’s about your Total Internet Presence, or TIP. This post kicks off a series on the seven elements of Total Internet Presence, a process we apply to make your digital brand more exciting, visible, transparent, accessible and competitive.
Today’s post is about the element of measurability — the yardstick for your online presence. There are some very sophisticated tools for measuring your “worth” on the Web, and most often we refer these as Web analytics.
What are Web analytics?
The Web Analytics Association defines Web analytics as “the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimize websites and web marketing initiatives.”
That sounds very academic, doesn’t it? Bottom line, Web analytics provide answers to a couple of fundamental questions:
How did visitors find my website?
What do visitors do once they reach my website?
Why measure?
There’s an old saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Taking that a bit further, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Some specific benefits of using Web analytics are:
Allowing you to determine if your investment in website visit drivers such as advertising, SEO and social media is paying off. For example, is the company Facebook page really driving visits to the website?
Providing historical benchmarking. For example, are visits increasing or decreasing?
What to measure?
All of the data in the world are useless if you haven’t established some specific metrics (i.e., measurements of success). Do you know if you’re winning or losing?
Some of the most common website metrics – and the data used to determine if they’re being met – are:
Increase site traffic:
Total visits
Unique visitors
Improve site visibility:
Traffic sources (i.e., search engines and other websites sending visitors to your site)
Search engine rankings
Improve Site Engagement:
Average visits per unique visitor
Average page views per visit
Site bounce rate
Return visitors
Increase Conversions:
White paper downloads
Contact forms submitted
How do you measure up?
Drop me a note here if you want to look into assessing your company or organization’s measurability. We can discuss the analytics that will best meet your unique needs.
Thanks to those who attended the “Balancing Legal and Communication Perspectives on Social Media” workshop from Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. and Paul Werth Associates on October 20, 2009.
We hope you enjoyed hearing perspectives from both fronts on how social media impacts our workplace and our brands.
The presenters, including myself; Susan DiMickele, a partner at Squire Sanders; Traci Martinez, an associate at Squire Sanders; and Kim Ratcliff, a vice president at Werth, sat down to provide an overview of the insights shared during this complimentary workshop.
On October 20, Paul Werth Associates is pleased to partner with the Columbus office of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey on a presentation discussing how social media impacts brand reputation and how important it is for the communications and legal teams to coordinate efforts. This pre-registration only event will take place 3-7 pm close to the OSU campus.
The presenters, including myself; Susan DiMickele, a partner at Squire Sanders; Traci Martinez, an associate at Squire Sanders; and Kim Ratcliff, a vice president at Werth, recently sat down to provide a sneak peak of the insights to be shared during this complimentary workshop.
If you’re interested in registering, click here or please contact Adla Blackwell at (614) 365.2319.
Nearly 100 of Werth’s friends and clients gathered at OSU Longaberger Alumni House last week to think about the worst things that could happen to them. Crisis communications, an essential aspect of public relations, has gotten even more challenging in the digital age.
We no longer control the flow of information about our organizations, and it’s hard to make sure that it’s even accurate today. And that’s on a good day! When things go wrong, the damage spreads like wildfire. Oxford-Metrica reports, “During the next five years, 83 percent of companies will face a crisis that, …as a result of the way it was managed…, will negatively impact share price between 20 and 30 percent.”
As we told our friends at last week’s workshop, Werth has many decades of experience in crisis communications and is actively working in the digital environment to prevent and mitigate reputation problems for our clients nearly every day. Here are some rules that work:
Listen to both what is said and who is saying it. Just as one journalist can trigger a global story, just one relevant blogger can generate a crisis.
Insert yourself into conversations when you have something positive to contribute.
Take the time to do a thorough, easy-to-use crisis plan and train your spokespeople. Then help the C-suite to become smart about social media.
Create a big digital footprint so you own your Google and other search engine results and your brand name on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Assume others know more about the crisis than you do. It’s OK to say, “I don’t know, but I will find out.”
Get templates of statements approved before the crisis begins.
Spread the truth faster than the rumors, responding in one hour or less. Get your message into the conversation before the story hardens.
Address the crowd where it gathers. If the flashpoint for digital crisis is YouTube, respond using that communications vehicle.
Notify employees and media at the same time.
Show you care. Tone and demeanor are important.
Werth will be hosting a Webinar next month to review these rules and other essentials for digital crisis communications. In addition, we will soon release a white paper that explores the detail from our workshop. We will share more information as the dates approach.
In the meantime, have you updated your crisis plan with a digital component? If you haven’t, you’re not ready for the worst. You’re welcome to contact me at ktwinem@paulwerth.com or 614.224.8114 to talk about the best ways to get started. Remember: Time is not on your side in the era of digital crisis, but Werth can make sure that you are protected.
Virtually all business leaders think about the reputation of their organizations at least once a day … with good reason. They are in high-risk situations, guiding the organizations through the economic chaos at the same time that digital media is exploding, making the task of maintaining and enhancing reputation especially difficult.
As reputation management has become the No. 1 communication priority, more top communications officers are reporting directly to the CEO to allow quick reaction to emerging crises. A May 2009 survey by Weber Shandwick found that 58 percent of chief communications officers now report directly to their CEOs, as opposed to 48 percent a year ago.
They are dealing with a new world: Bloggers post rumors as facts. Everyone with a cell phone is a cameraman. A single video posted by a low-level employee can cause vast damage to a company’s reputation.
In this world, chief communicators may already be in a crisis they don’t recognize if they have not completely updated their crisis monitoring and response programs for the digital world.
To help our clients and friends, Werth is offering a complimentary workshop on “Crisis Communications in the Age of the Internet,” scheduled for 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 18, at the Longaberger Alumni House, 2200 Olentangy River Road, Columbus. A continental breakfast will be served and there will be opportunity for networking beginning at 8:00 a.m.
We encourage everyone to take this step toward preventing online reputation damage. For more information, call 614.224.8114 or visit www.paulwerth.com/trouble
